It can't be much fun to be a vendor of a mainstream desktop operating system. On any given day, one might face reports of a new security vulnerability. One might be accused of harboring, or even authoring, spyware. One might hear complaints that one's pace of innovation had slowed, with more time elapsing between less dramatic updates to one's crown-jewel operating system.

When Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs the week of Aug. 7 showed features of the forthcoming OS X 10.5, code-named (and most likely also to be trade-named) Leopard, he showed no sign of lowering the strength of the reality distortion field that he's famous for generating around his product and technology announcements. If anything, Jobs actually turned the knob up to 11 by claiming that next spring's general release of Leopard would steal a march on Microsoft, delivering to Apple users the equivalent of "Vista 2.0."